Featured Articles

Eating out is always tricky when you’re on a diet, but there is no need to avoid going out altogether. Try to limit your meals out to once a week during the weight-loss phase of your diet. Once you have moved onto the maintenance plan, you can eat out more often. Here are some simple [...]

Let’s deal with the colour question first. Why is it white if it comes from the same plant as green and black tea — Camellia sinensis ? Indeed, it does, but it’s made from the unopened buds, which are clothed in a fuzz of fine, silvery “hairs”, giving it a whitish colour. When it’s made [...]

Red yeast rice, or red fermented rice, is a fermented product of rice on which a species of red yeast, Monascus purpureus, has been grown. It has been used for centuries in China as both a food and a medicinal product. The first documented use of red yeast rice was as early as 800 CE [...]

Almond oil has been used for centuries as an all-over beauty treatment that fosters healthy skin, hair and nails. Now, this beauty therapists favourite is appearing in more retail products, as consumers learn the benefits of this humble yet powerful natural moisturiser. Among the oils used in professional beauty therapy treatments, almond oil is a [...]

Chlorella is a unicellular, microscopic, freshwater green algae that grows most rapidly in areas with plenty of sunlight and fresh water. It was one of the first lifeforms to exist three-and-a-half million years ago. Chlorella is widely distributed in fresh water all over the world It has efficient nutrient uptake mechanisms and through photosynthesis reproduces [...]

Trichomonads are motile, flagellate, protozoan organisms known to cause a diverse spectrum of diseases in humans. Most of these diseases are rare. The single exception is Trichomonas vaginalis, the most significant of these parasites, which infects between 3 and 5 million American women each year. The organism causes an inflammation of the vaginal wall, or [...]

Tattoos have been used in many cultures to identify beauty, position or status, and worth. They mark rites of passage, such as a life cycle event (marriage, pregnancy, childbirth, death), change in an individual’s social position, the progression from childhood to puberty, and the initiation into social and different family groups. For instance, both men [...]

Striae gravidarum, also known as “stretch marks,” arise during pregnancy in the majority of women. Common locations include the abdomen, breasts, buttocks, and thighs. Although the exact etiology is unknown, mechanical stress on connective tissue due to increased size of the various portions of the body is thought to be important. There are no significant [...]

Approximately 28% of all men and 22% of all women are current cigarette smokers. Factors that influence smoking initiation, addiction, and smoking cessation as well as the health consequences of smoking are generally similar in men and women. SMOKING INITIATION Many women start to smoke as teenagers. Current figures indicate that, in 2000, about 30% [...]

Schizophrenia is a severe mental illness that affects 1% of the world’s population. Contrary to popular opinion, schizophrenia is not a “split personality.” Schizophrenia is a chronic disorder in which individuals experience disturbances in thinking and behavior. People with schizophrenia have a higher risk of suicide, and approximately 10% of all people with schizophrenia commit [...]

Recent Articles

He was the kind of patient I went to medical school for. By the time I met him, he had had a rough go of it. After learning the previous year that he had lymphoma, he was fortunate enough to receive a bone marrow transplant — only to have his body promptly reject it. On [...]

Two new experiments, one involving people and the other animals, suggest that regular exercise can substantially improve memory, although different types of exercise seem to affect the brain quite differently. The news may offer consolation for the growing numbers of us who are entering age groups most at risk for cognitive decline. It was back [...]

A new study suggests that adolescent obesity could be decreased if teenagers got more sleep, and the heaviest would benefit most. For a study published last week in Pediatrics, researchers surveyed 1,429 ninth graders, gathering data on height and weight. The children reported their sleep habits on weekdays and weekends to the nearest 15 minutes. [...]

A new study using the patterns of Google search queries suggests that mental illnesses flourish in winter and decline in summer. In both the United States and Australia, researchers found distinct seasonal patterns, high in winter and low in summer, in searches pertaining to anxiety, obsessive compulsive disorder, bipolar disorder, eating disorders, depression, suicide, attention [...]

On a recent Sunday afternoon, a 75-year-old Philadelphia man with a fever of over 102 degrees was unable to reach his doctor. So his daughter took him to an emergency room, where the two sat for hours until he was examined by a physician who found no reason for the fever and decided to admit [...]

Alcohol consumption is known to increase the risk for breast cancer. But a new study suggests that moderate drinking has little effect on survival after diagnosis, and may reduce deaths from cardiovascular disease. Researchers, writing online in The Journal of Clinical Oncology, studied 22,890 women with breast cancer, recording information on alcohol intake before diagnosis [...]

Beware of the blender: It may be a bacteria trap. So says a new report that looked at the places and appliances in household kitchens that are most – and least – likely to harbor germs like E. coli and salmonella. The report found that some of the areas people considered most likely to be [...]

Q I know sitting at a desk all day is really bad for me. Is sitting on an exercise ball any better? What if instead of sitting in an office chair, I perch with good posture on an exercise ball? Seems like sitting that way engages some of my muscles so perhaps isn’t quite so [...]

Nuts can add lots of flavor and crunch to your favorite dishes, and they just happen to be good for you. In this week’s Recipes for Health, Martha Rose Shulman celebrates the versatility of the walnut. As she writes: I routinely throw them into salads of all kinds, and finely chopped walnuts can go into [...]

C. difficile contamination of hospital rooms is a leading cause of deadly infections, and human behavior may be at least as important as technological innovation in controlling it. A new study has found that imposing a three-step cleaning procedure — and supervising it carefully — can nearly eliminate the microbe. Over a 21-month period at [...]

Chelation therapy has been used as an alternative treatment for heart disease since the 1950s, but with scanty evidence to support the practice, most medical doctors have long dismissed it as little more than quackery. But now a prestigious medical journal has published the results of a large, long-term clinical trial of chelation in heart [...]

Laura Ward, 41, had always attributed her excess pounds to the drugs she takes for major depression. So Ms. Ward, who is 5-foot-6 and once weighed 220 pounds, didn’t try to slim down or avoid dietary pitfalls like fried chicken. But in a clinical trial, Ms. Ward managed to lose more than 30 pounds doing [...]

Doctors in the United States routinely prescribe potentially harmful drugs to older patients, and the problem is particularly acute in the South, a new study shows. The analysis found that more than one in five seniors on Medicare in the South were prescribed medications that health authorities have specifically advised doctors to avoid giving to [...]

If you give a rat a running wheel and it decides not to use it, are genes to blame? And if so, what does that tell us about why many people skip exercise? To examine those questions, scientists at the University of Missouri in Columbia recently interbred rats to create two very distinct groups of [...]

THE FACTS Researchers used to think that children who started eating fish at an early age were more likely to develop allergies. But lately, the tide has turned. Now scientists suspect that introducing fish at an early age may help protect against allergies. Some even argue that the rising prevalence of allergic diseases may have [...]

Americans seem to think that every health problem can be solved with a pill. And certainly many are, especially infectious diseases that succumb to antibiotics, antifungals and, increasingly, antivirals. But that leaves a medical dictionary full of ailments that continue to plague people despite the best efforts of Big Pharma. Most are chronic health problems [...]

On Thursday, we challenged Well readers to solve the mystery of a 3-month-old baby who stopped eating and became weak. More than 700 readers wrote in with their take on this terrifying case. More than 100 nailed the diagnosis. And I loved all the discussion! The correct diagnosis is… Infant botulism. The first person with [...]

Everyone knows fish is good for you, but many of us get stuck eating the same varieties – tuna, cod, salmon and shrimp. This week Martha Rose Shulman explores the flavor and benefits of trying new types of fish. This week I made five different fish dishes and did not use any of the favorite [...]

Q In weight training, is it better to increase the number of repetitions or the amount of weight over time? Asked by Sharon • 119 votes A If by “better,” you mean helps you gain muscle and strength without hurting yourself, then “the answer, to me, is pretty clear,” said Stuart Phillips, a professor of [...]

No smoking, dog-walking, biking, skating or scooting. There is a sign stating certain things you may not do on the High Line, Manhattan’s celebrated, elevated pedestrian park that was once a freight railway. Do not throw objects, amplify sound or walk on the gravel or weeds. But something is missing from the list: a prohibition [...]